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Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

theregister.com

181–190 of 227 posts

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America, we simply have private individuals sue each other in civil court for that rather than state prosecution in criminal court. Close enough.

You still need legal standing for a civil case and the defendant isn't being threatened with jail time or men with guns. Yes, frivolous cases are a thing but it's both unlikely (because money) and not in the same league as criminal prosecution.

Stuff like the clean air act says that you don't. That's why "physicians for a healthy environment" were able to sue the diesel brothers for emissions delete hardware despite the fact they weren't able to point to standing for $760,000 in damages to themselves, unless by some insane legal stretch you want to argue literally everything anyone does has a tiny effect on you thus you have standing because a few molecules of whatever that actor did floated to where you are. In the end they even managed to put a "diesel brother" in jail despite the fact that a judge who examined his circumstances of being jailed for 'civil contempt' were bogus.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still need legal standing for a civil case and the defendant isn't being threatened with jail time or men with guns. Yes, frivolous cases are a thing but it's both unlikely (because money) and not in the same league as criminal prosecution.

Stuff like the clean air act says that you don't. That's why "physicians for a healthy environment" were able to sue the diesel brothers for emissions delete hardware despite the fact they weren't able to point to standing for $760,000 in damages to themselves, unless by some insane legal stretch you want to argue literally everything anyone does has a tiny effect on you thus you have standing because a few molecules…

The consequences of the Wickard v. Filburn mistake will continue to haunt us until that decision is finally overturned. (Slightly different area of the law but similar principle.)

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#184
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me where the California age attestation law, or any other law you don't like has

(e) (1) “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application. (2) “Covered application store” does not me…

> Show me where the [law] has been used successfully in a lawsuit against an OS developer for the construction of their OS

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh... I am the opposite. I want my kids exposed to the brutal realities of the world asap. I reflect that my innocence caused me to make some extreme major mistakes as a young adult that took a decade to show itself. I cannot go back, and now I am suffering terribly. I blame my parents at least a little bit, but I blame western idealism more majorly.

I am intrigued by this. I have long thought that exposing children to optimism and "what could be" allows them to envision a world different from our own. Kind of like how once you're in capitalism it's hard to think of alternatives.

I think we do a little too much of this and end up hiding the way the world really is from kids who grow up middle class. So their politics and ethics suffer. The kids could arguably be better adjusted when naive but we aren't doing ourselves any favors in the long term.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like the clean air act says that you don't. That's why "physicians for a healthy environment" were able to sue the diesel brothers for emissions delete hardware despite the fact they weren't able to point to standing for $760,000 in damages to themselves, unless by some insane legal stretch you want to argue literally everything anyone does has a tiny effect on you thus you have standing because a few molecules…

The consequences of the Wickard v. Filburn mistake will continue to haunt us until that decision is finally overturned. (Slightly different area of the law but similar principle.)

Even if the federal government won't sue, state and other jurisdictions could. The Diesel Brothers also ran afoul of Utah’s State Implementation Plan of the CAA. This whole story is about state law.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#187
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of the slippery slope? A cornerstone of American political philosophy? Arguments like this one are why the authoritarian ratchet continues to turn unimpeded over time.

Slippery slope is famously a fallacious argument. My first exposure to it was people insisting that legalizing gay marriage would end up legalizing marriage to animals.

People's misuse of the argument doesn't weaken its appropriate application.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#188
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(e) (1) “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application. (2) “Covered application store” does not me…

> Show me where the [law] has been used successfully in a lawsuit against an OS developer for the construction of their OS

> Where does it explicitly mention operating systems?

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have made some fascinating assumptions about the person you are addressing. I recommend refraining from that in the future and instead asking why a fellow American takes a position other than the one you hold. Two guys built a website to try and help people curb their undesired sexual proclivities and because they were bad at security, their users' personal information (including their own logs of their sexual pr…

If you’re an American and you want to change this, feel free to propose and pass an amendment. That’s the allowable process for changing what the government can and can’t do regarding individual rights. Edit: removed part of my comment because misunderstood your rambling point about that website, and I guess I have no idea how it relates to OS regulation. Websites are not operating systems. Your ability to tell me ho…

Conversely, you're an American and you want to change this, feel free to propose and pass an amendment that makes regulation of OS as a product the concern of the federal government, as opposed to (as per the 10th Amendment) a state government concern. These regulations are state affairs for the same reason that glyphosate is known in the state of California as a carcinogen (but not other states). Product standards are, generally, a state-level concern. I agree this is inefficient, but the burden to modify the Constitution is on those who would change that inefficiency.

I appreciate the grace in taking a step back on my other comment; I phrased it poorly. Here's my point in better summary: I think we have an issue right now where our hobby has two things that are true that have significant negative societal outcomes. And to be clear, I'm primarily responding to this comment: "Who is providing them with legal indemnification since they are now apparently subject to fines for a fucking hobby if they do it wrong?" Because the answer to that is "If these things are true, it doesn't matter."

1. There is very little daylight between professional and hobby coding. That has been one of its virtues: a person with the right idea can garage-hack way into becoming Fark, or Slashdot, or Craigslist. But the flipside of that coin is that a kid messing around in their garage can cause real consequences for real people they will never even meet. How many websites are falling over from people experimenting with AI crawling right now (at disregard for the existing best-practices for crawling)?

2. A lone actor misusing the machine can have large-impact consequences on strangers. A kid in their basement doing script-kiddie garbage can exfiltrate confidential data, steal someone's electricity to mine Bitcoin, or even just wreck their machine remotely, for fun. A lone actor with no malicious intent but simple negligence can drop a machine on the Internet with all the ports open and become a botnet node. When we have sitautions like that in the past, we often use licensure to ensure some minimum standard of care when using the shared resource.

In fairness, what may want to be licensed here is using the Internet, not installing an operating system. I think that's a fair point and state governments trying to move the issue to the OS, not network-connectivity level, are making a mistake.

Re: Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting is far more important. If someone is falsely denied access to some web site, it doesn't matter. But everyone with the right to vote must be allowed to vote, no exceptions. In any case, voting is substantially more intrusive. You must register with your full name and address, which is made public record. Each time you vote, that is also made public record (not who you voted for, but the fact that you voted). In…

I disagree there. I think that this is far more intrusive, because it impacts your everyday life rather than just a small slice of it, and thus more important.

"Voting isn't very important because you don't do it very often" good lord. No wonder this country is going to hell.
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